THE 3RD LAW - Make it easy - Chapters 11, 12 and 13

I'm back, by popular demand!

Sorry guys for the delay, a lot of new students are arriving, so I needed to give them some attention. BUT I DID NOT FORGET YOU ALL MY BELOVED ONES!

Ok, so, now it's time to make it easy, right? Share with your colleagues and me about your journey until here. What do you think that you can take from these 3 last chapters (11, 12 and 13) that you can apply in your daily life?

You have until March 30 to enter your comments here. It will be my birthday, so as a gift give me a BIG comment (or chocolates and wine, my address you guys can ask inbox).

I realsed how aligning habits with the concept of self-image can lead to more severities and profitable changes. By changing how we see ourself and adopting a new identity that matches ours desired habits, we can make behavior changes more effectively. The author talks about how our surroundings influence your habits. Organizing our environment it's very important to support positive behaviors and discourage negative ones, we can prepare ourself for success in forming new habits.
In chapter 13 introduces the "two-minute rule," which suggests starting habits with small actions that take less than two minutes, something that in my opinion is easy to apply in day-to-day. This approach helps overcome procrastination and gradually build up to more significant habits, focusing on consistency and starting small, we can make progress towards ours goals making everything until here making more meaning!

The first thing we need to talk about is a big mistake that everybody makes when starting introduction habits, including me: have ideas makes you feel like you’re getting things done, but it’s not true, you’re just preparing to get something done. So, preparation becomes a form of procrastination, you don’t want to be planning or mapping every feature of a new habit, you want to be practicing.
So, the first thing you need to understand is: that you need repetition, not perfection. Because every action needs a certain amount of energy, when more energy is required the less likely it’s to occur, and when the less energy a habit requires the more likely it’s for you. That’s the reason why it’s crucial to make your habits so easy that you’ll do them even when you don’t feel like it. But you only could be capable of this if you practice always.
The second thing you need to pay attention to is the environment. If you have to start with a new habit in a new environment you could fail, because you going try to too many new things and this’s going need too much energy from you. Which brings us to the third thing: pay attention to the little choices you make in your day, for this, you can use the 2-minute rules that the author talks about. When you start a new habit, it should take less than 2 minutes to do, like: study for class start with open my notes, or running 3 miles start with me putting my shoes. It means that can be challenging but the first two minutes should be easy, so you don’t get lost and fail because a habit needs to be established before it can be improved.
And of course, you need to create some obstacles to make bad habits difficult, like when you want to eat more healthily and less processed food, you need to have in your house only fruits, vegetables, etc., if you don’t have chocolate, you are not going eat chocolate. This is how you break a bad habit; you reduce exposure.
And I think I can say that after I finished this chapter: I did everything wrong! And that’s the reason I couldn’t create good habits, but now I going to try to put this steeps in action.

While reading this book I've noticed some important things and I'm trying to identify some patterns in my routine. Consequently, I've made some tests. In the end of the book, the author said something that turned a key in my mind. We usually make a question like: "How long time do I have to do some activity to become a habit?". But the correct is "How many times do I have to do some activity to become a habit?". There is a huge difference between the questions. We can see this too much in the productivity, we usually think that time is *synonym of productivity which is not true. In the first moment of habit creation, I believe this must be the thinking: Try to do this often as possible to the brain can create the neural links and consequently the process being more automatized.

Therefore, other point came in and looked out me and I have been practicing many times. The two minute rule. In the days that we have no motivation to start a task, then we start with the mindset of doing that task for 2 minutes and after that we continue. We broke the biggest bar that is to start that task. The interesting point of this rule is understanding that our brain is *malleable and we can play with it, we only have to set up the right way.

About the pre habits: Set up some things can help to create more cues and be easiest. This helps me a lot! I noticed if I spend too much energy thinking and organizing without time, consequently my chances of procrastinating increase. Two examples: Set my clothes one day before going to the university and set my bag before working out. In this moment, I only follow the path automatically because it is all set, avoiding any slide.

To conclude, follow some points that I have practicing: 1- Habit stacking; 2- Pre habits patterns; 3- 2 minute rule; 4- Reward system;  5- Habit tracking, there are many apps to do it, I'm using the "habit".

Thank you, you all for participating. I read about this 2 minute rule, and I have one 5 minute rule for shopping. If I see something that I really like I need to be sure for at least for 5 minutes without thinking that much about it, if after 5 minutes I still want it, I buy it, but, If I start to have some doubts, see you later alligator!

Are you ready for our final topic?